“And I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free….”  As we stood in a crowded room in a Columbus Courthouse, those words drifted over the loudspeaker.  The waiting, the ceremony – it was all over – and my parents were now truly Americans.

After twelve years of visas, green cards, applications, fees, and thousands of dollars spent, citizenship was theirs.  A year later, my brother and I joined our three American-born siblings and naturalized parents and became citizens as well.

“God bless America, land that I love….”  When my parents moved to America they had no intention of staying.  They planned to stay for two years and then return to the tiny, Mediterranean island of Malta from which we had come…or so they thought.  However, it was not only the mountains, the prairies, and the oceans that captured the hearts of my European parents.  The generosity, kindness, and openness of the American people stretched from sea to shining sea, and that made us want to become a deeper part of this great land.

Now that I am a citizen, when I say the pledge of Allegiance or sing the National Anthem, a shiver runs through my whole being!  I realize that “we the people” are all united in our love of this great “land of the free and home of the brave!”  That is what makes America so special. 

We will not, we cannot forget that our freedom was bought at a price – the price of the lives of so many men and women who valued the freedom of the future more than the lives they were living in the present.  It is up to us never to forget and to continue to fight for what they won for us. 

Our founding fathers wrote the Constitution and it has lasted until this present day.  The fight for freedom has not lessened.  Unless we continue to strive “to form a more perfect union” our nation will go back to slavery, back to inequality, back to days we shudder to remember.  As long as we remain “one nation, under God,” we WILL be indivisible.  However, if we redefine what life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness stand for, if we compromise truth for terror, freedoms for falsehoods, and life for death…we will fall. 

So, as I stand and “pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands,” a republic I am now a citizen of, I AM proud to be an American.  I will stand up and support those freedoms that were declared inalienable by our founding fathers.  I believe in an America that promises “liberty and justice to all: born and unborn,” and an America that will not settle for less than what our forefathers fought to defend.  “I will stand up next to you…,” and we stand next to generation after generation of Americans and we will “defend her still today – because there ain’t no doubt [we] love this land...God bless the USA!”